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Sex and the Teenage Mind
2002 - R - 91 Mins.
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| Director: Don Gold | | Producer: Steve Ader and Don Gold | | Written By: Don Gold | | Starring: Jay Michael Ferguson, Allison Lange, Dee Wallace-Stone, Richard Karn and Michael Bower |
| Review by: Bill King |
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Nobody watches a movie called 'Sex and the Teenage Mind' and expects any kind of stellar craftsmanship, but certainly there must be an expectation that the filmmakers were at least trying to put their film school education to use. Throughout this entire film, there is no indication that anyone involved knew anything about plotting, juxtaposition, scripting and especially relevance. Individual scenes are completely detached from the main narrative, and the main narrative itself is detached from anything resembling a good movie. This thing smacks of amateurism.
'Sex and the Teenage Mind' is a raunchy high school sex comedy about a nerdish type who lusts after the beautiful Kellie (Allison Lange, gorgeous), knowing all the while that he isn't in her same league. That all changes when Virgil Heitmeyer (Jay Michael Ferguson) attempts to bail Kellie out of trouble by claiming responsibility for a cheat-cheat she dropped on the floor during a test. He says it's his notes, and the teacher, too gullible to distrust him, stares at Virgil with a dumbfounded look on his face. Meanwhile, Kellie has just broken up with her boyfriend Scott (Jordan Belfi), which means she's free to return the favor to Virgil in the form of a dinner date at her house.
Nearly every scene between the time she asks him out and the time he arrives on her doorstep is a superb waste of space. Virgil's overweight friend Dwayne (Michael Bower) has a date of his own, but this little plot thread is not resolved in any way. We see them running together in the park to help him lose weight, but this scene neither stems from a previous scene, nor does it lead anywhere significant. Scott does go up to him afterwards to force him to deliver a message to Virgil to stay away from Kellie, but this scene serves one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to show Dwayne puke all over Scott. Dwayne never does warn Virgil, because later he's too busy masturbating to dirty magazines.
In the tradition of 'American Pie' (a movie that perhaps inadvertently paved the way for this garbage), someone has to be embarrassed by using the john, and sure enough that person is none other than Danica McKellar of "The Wonder Years" fame. The girl is smart (she's a fellow math major, good for her), but what the heck possessed her to do this movie? It's a mystery that is harder to solve than the mathematical proof she co-wrote (Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin–Teller models on Z). I should mention that writer/director Don Gold tosses in a random (and unnecessary) scene with McKellar in her underwear. If that's something you want to see, then check out her Stuff Magazine layout.
This is the kind of movie that opens with the main character lying on his bed with a boner, which of course reminded me of the opening to 'Porky's.' Erections and flatulence are the most popular topics for jokes, even when such jokes aren't warranted. In one ridiculous move, the director cut away from a scene just so we can get a close-up of Virgil's ass when he farts. This leads immediately to a farting contest between him and Dwayne. Later, Virgil farts outside of Kellie's house. What's the director's obsession with this bodily function? He even goes so far as to show Virgil wiping has ass with a towel before throwing it out the window. Students of teen comedies will predict that someone will use that towel to dry off, but instead, nothing happens. The scene exists like a lab specimen, isolated from its surroundings.
Most of the gross-out stuff is over when Virgil arrives at Kellie's house, where the film turns inexplicably sweet, as if to offset the gross-out parts that dominated the running time. It is during the ending that Don Gold pulls off his biggest offense by nullifying everything that happens in that house. I won't say how he does it, but it is a shameful move on his part. It's totally nonsensical and just a plain old bad creative decision. Of course, doing something creative was clearly out of Gold's reach.
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